"Everyone who wants to be progressive, in inverted comas, want to use
mellotrons, Marshall amps and Rickenbacker basses, you know, it's all
back to 1973, which is hardly progressive. So it's very much regressive.
But it seems that progressive has become a generic term for a style of
music which involves time changes, classical moods... "

The funny thing is, there are prog fans who think Wetton is pretentious and pompous for saying something so 'offensive'. Yeah, nevermind if he played with KC and UK, you know more than Wetton about prog, that's the way it goes.

"Everyone who wants to be progressive, in inverted comas, want to use
mellotrons, Marshall amps and Rickenbacker basses, you know, it's all
back to 1973, which is hardly progressive. So it's very much regressive.
But it seems that progressive has become a generic term for a style of
music which involves time changes, classical moods... "

The funny thing is, there are prog fans who think Wetton is pretentious and pompous for saying something so 'offensive'. Yeah, nevermind if he played with KC and UK, you know more than Wetton about prog, that's the way it goes.

I doubt that Weton is well up on the current prog scene tbh. He has basically described Anglagard but I don't think a band like say Anathema are anything like what he describes. John does have his well voiced criticisms of prog not much unlike Steven Wilson has also received similar bashing. However at least Steven knows the prog scene now.

In 1998, I don't think he'd have been thinking about Anathema and I don't know if prog metal was widely embraced as a part of the wider prog rock umbrella either at that point (I doubt it). As a description of retro prog, his views hit the nail on the head. He'd have to be asked in a fresh interview what does he think of bands like Anathema. However, considering the recent thread where even Wilson's prog credentials were pretty brazenly brought into question, I am not sure the situation has changed much. There's still a large section of prog listeners who associate it with certain sounds, instruments and styles. Which is no different from any other rock genre and rock itself is trapped in ubiquity and stereotypes at the moment. But another cliche of prog is to attempt to present it as something very different and superior from other rock music....and we wonder why critics call it pretentious.

If progressive music is based on going against against clichés, doesn't that mean that any cliché used in prog is automatically no longer a cliché, as it's normal to do something different and different to do something normal? In that way the existence of prog-cliché is automatically impossible.

If progressive music is based on going against against clichés, doesn't that mean that any cliché used in prog is automatically no longer a cliché, as it's normal to do something different and different to do something normal? In that way the existence of prog-cliché is automatically impossible.

It's not a cliché the first time somebody does it. It becomes a cliché after too many people do the same thing. Playing guitar like Hendrix wasn't a cliché when Hendrix did it, but later became one.

Hiring a desert island to go record your new album in a state of complete isolation and profound mystical meditation, spending a fortune to bring all the equipment there, only to realise that you miss the smell of car exhausts and bringing everything back and starting it all over again at Abbey Road

"Everyone who wants to be progressive, in inverted comas, want to use
mellotrons, Marshall amps and Rickenbacker basses, you know, it's all
back to 1973, which is hardly progressive. So it's very much regressive.
But it seems that progressive has become a generic term for a style of
music which involves time changes, classical moods... "

Isn't there a live 90's album with Wetton (Steve Hackett in Japan, or Asia in Japan, or something) where they play an old Genesis or Crimson song and after Wetton asks the audience, "Was that prog enough for you?"

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